113 Taylor contends that “it is because men are the kind of
beings they are—namely, what I have called
conative beings—that the distinction
between good and evil arises....”[2]His notion is meant as a contrast (and supplement) to the notion of men
as cognitive beings.

1. Men as Conative
Beings:

Taylor contends that while persons are cognitive beings,
they are also conative beings; and an over-emphasis upon the former leads moral
theorists (and other philosophers) astray.

113-114 “To describe men as
conative is not to say anything at all abstruse or metaphysical, as this bit of
terminology might suggest.It is
only to call attention to a fact of human nature with which everyone is
perfectly familiar: men have needs, desires, and goals; they pursue ends, they
have certain wants and generally go about trying to satisfy them in various
ways.”

-114 He claims that it is
more obvious that we are conative beings than it is that we are cognitive ones!

(b) “...in speaking of a man’s
goals or purposes, one need not be referring to some ultimate goal....The goal
of one’s activity might be exceedingly trivial and of only momentary
significance...”Of course, he
notes, most individuals do have longer-range goals.

(c) “...reason appears to enter
into men’s purposeful activity primarily to devise the means to attain the ends
and has little to do with ends themselves.”

-“It is, for example,
neither rational nor irrational that one should want to drink; it is merely an
expression of the fact that he is thirst.In the same sense, it is neither rational nor irrational that a man
should want to swat a fly, or catch a bus, or become a physician, or attain fame
as an author.”

2. Conation as the
Precondition of Good and Evil:

With this “background,” Taylor notes that many philosophers
contend that some things are naturally
good (or right) and others are
naturally evil (or wrong).
Taylor contends that if we think of a
world which is devoid of life, the notions of good and evil will have no
purchase:

115 “...note that the
basic distinction between good and evil could not even theoretically be drawn in
a world that we imagined to be devoid of all life.That is, if we suppose the world to be exactly as it is, except that it
contains not one living thing, it seems clear that nothing in it would be good
and nothing bad.It would just be a
dead world, turning through space with a lifeless atmosphere.Having deprived our imagined world of all life, we can modify it in
numberless ways, but by no such modification can we ever produce the slightest
hint of good or evil in it until we
introduce at least one living being capable of reacting in one way or another to
the world as that being finds it.”

Taylor notes that if we
imagine a world populated by machine-like
men who are rational, perceive, but which have no wants, needs, purposes, or
desires, [151] “...a world inhabited by such beings would still be a world
devoid of any good or evil.Like the first world...this one might contain anything we care to put
into it without there arising the least semblance of good or of evil—until
we imagine it to contain at least one being having some need, interest, or
purpose.”

3. The Emergence of
Good and Evil:

Taylor suggests, however, that
the moment we “add” just one sentient
being[3]
to the world imagined thus far, we find that the distinction between good and
evil begins to make sense!

116 “Those things are
good that this one being finds satisfying to his needs and desires, and those
bad to which he reacts in the opposite way.Things in the world are not merely perceived by this being, but perceived
as holding promise or threat to whatever interests him....The distinction
between good and evil in a world containing only one living being possessed of
needs and wants arises, then, only in relation to those needs and wants, and in
no way existed in their absence.In
the most general terms, those things are good that satisfy this being’s actual
wants, those that frustrate them are bad.”[4]

-Note the similarity to
Hobbes here!He contends that good
and evil are defined solely in terms of an individuals’ appetites and desires.[5]

As Taylor notes, if good and evil
are defined in terms of this being’s wants and needs, then there clearly is no
sense to something that satisfies them but is not good, or something which
frustrates them but is not bad.

4. The Emergence of
Right and Wrong:

117 “There was...no place for
such ethical notions as right and
wrong or for
moral obligation so long as we
imagined a world containing only one
purposeful and sentient being, although the presence of such a being was enough
to produce good and evil.With the
introduction of a multiplicity of such beings, however, we have supplied the
foundation for these additional notions, for they are based on the fact that the
aims or purposes of such beings can conflict.Thus, two or more such beings can covet the same thing....The result is a
conflict of wills, which can lead to a
mutual aggression in which each stands to lose more than the thing for which
they are contending is worth to either of them.”

-117-118 Taylor notes that
conflict is not the only possibility here however—the individuals’ may find that
their wills coincide![153]
“Possibilities of the first kind are loaded with the threat of evil, and those
of the second kind with the promise of good, still thinking of good and evil in
the sense already adduced—namely, as that which satisfies or fulfills, and that
which frustrates felt needs and goals.”

5. Right and Wrong
as Relative to Rules:

Taylor points out that if
needs and goals are to be satisfied and fulfilled (within the context of the
possibilities of cooperation and conflict), then predictable behavior, and,
hence, rules are going to be
important.What is called for, he
says, are:

118 “...practices or
ways of behaving that are more or less regular and that can, therefore, be
expected.They are...rational in
this sense: such behavior offers the promise, to those who behave in the manner
in question, of avoiding evil and attaining good.”

6. The World As It
Is:

Taylor contends that with the addition of more and more
such conative and cognitive beings, and with the continued development of such
rules of behavior, yields the development of societies of increasing complexity.Here “morality” arises:

119 “How, then, do
moral right and
wrong arise?The answer is fairly obvious in light of what has been said.Right is simply the adherence to
rule, and wrong is violation of it.The notions of right and wrong absolutely presuppose the existence of
rules, at least in the broad sense of rule with which we began.That two beings should fight and injure each other in their contest for
something that each covets, and thereby, perhaps, each lose the good he wanted
to seize, is clearly an evil to both.But in the absence of a rule of behavior—that is, some anticipated
behavior to the contrary—no wrong has been done; only an evil has been
produced....The wrong comes into being with the violation of the rule, and in no
way existed ahead of the rule.The
same is, of course, true of right.”

(end of selection)

A Critical Comment:

Given what Taylor says about right and wrong being
nothing but adherence to rules, can
his account allow for legitimate civil
disobedience?He does not seem
to allow for the possibility of “wrong” rules, and if you can’t meaningfully
speak of them being “wrong,” then it would seem you can’t speak of them being
“right” either.Does his view,
then, entail some form of social relativism?He could, of course, claim that where there are several different
societies with differing “rules,” there arises both the possibilities of
conflict between (and coincidence of) interests, desires, and goals.This could allow, then, for “meta-rules” which would apply in such cases!

(end)

B. Supplementary
Material:

You may want to read the other selection from Taylor’s
Good and Evil in the text: “On the
Socratic Dilemma,” pp. 93-98 entitled “On the Socratic Dilemma.”[6]There he maintains that his:

96-97 “…model of human nature…is
an amalgam of intelligence and will, [which] yields an elementary distinction
between what is and what
ought to be.By our reason and intelligence, drawing from the testimony of our senses,
we discover what is, but what ought
to be is the declaration of the will.This is to say that what ought to be is a desideratum, the object of
desire, or simply what is wanted by this or that man, by some group of men, or
perhaps by all men.”

97 “Good and evil are not, as
Socrates sometimes thought, elusive or deeply hidden properties of things that
only a philosopher can hope to discern.The reason they are so hard to discern, even by a philosopher, is
apparently that they are not qualities of things at all, just considered by
themselves and independent of human needs and feelings.Men pronounce things good to the extent that these things appear to
promise satisfaction of their needs or the fulfillment of their aims and goals,
whatever these might be.They
pronounce things bad to the extent that they appear threatening, either as
obstacles to what we happen to want, or as sources of just what we do not want.The distinction between good and evil is therefore relative to goals,
ends, and wants—in a word, to the will—and has no meaning except in relation to
this.”

In his “A Critique of Kantianism, Richard Taylor maintains
that:

Kant peoples a veritable
utopia, which he of course does not imagine as existing, with these Ends in
Themselves, and calls it the Kingdom of Ends.Ends in Themselves are, thus, not to be thought of as those men that live
and toil on the earth; them are not suffering, rejoicing, fumbling, living, and
dying human beings; they are not men that anyone has ever seen, or would be apt
to recognize as men if they did see them, or apt to like very much is he did
recognize them.They are abstract
things, reifications of Rational nature, fabricated by Kant and now called
Rational Beings or Ends in Themselves.Their purpose, unlike that of any creature under the sun, is not to
sorrow and rejoice, not to love and hate, not to beget offspring, not to grow
old and die, and not to get on as best they can to such destinies as the world
has allotted them.Their purpose is
just to legislate--to legislate
morally and rationally for this rational Kingdom of Ends.[7]

Notes: (click on
note number to return to the text for the note)

[1] The
supplement is to Richard Taylor’s “Value and the
Origin of Right and Wrong,” in
Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary
Readings (sixth edition), eds. Louis Pojman
and James Fieser (Boston: Wadsworth, 2011), pp.
113-119.The essay originally appeared in Taylor’s
Good and
Evil (N.Y.: Prometheus, 1970).

[2] Richard
Taylor, “Value and the Origin of Right and
Wrong” [1970],
in
Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary
Readings (fifth edition), ed. Louis Pojman
(Belmont: Wadsworth, 2002), pp. 148-154, p. 148.The selection originally appeared in
Taylor’s
Good and Evil (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1970).Emphasis added to the passage.